For quite a while, [community] in Arch has led an almost independent
existence, being tightly coupled with the AUR. Many improvements have
been made in the workflow of package distribution in 'devtools' which
are used for uploading and managing packages in the [core] and [extra]
repositories.

This proposal suggests that the [community] repository move to using the
same repository system as [core] or [extra]. The benefits and detriments
of the proposal, along with the technical steps to complete the transition
(if the proposal were to be passed) are discussed below.

Detriments

It might affect the autonomy of Trusted Users, and this is a big change from the way we've been used to.

The effort to make the transition happen is not trivial.

You'd lose votes for community packages.

You'd lose package comments and notifications.

Benefits

There'll be fewer tools to support, since Trusted Users would then use the same tools as Arch developers, but with reduced permissions (only permission to write to the [community] repository)

It'd be much easier to create and maintain a [community-testing] repository (or even the [testing] repository, if it's possible to cleanly separate the relevant permissions). A testing repository for [community] would be a great help in doing rebuilds.

It'll be easier to migrate from being a Trusted User to a developer, since all the repositories would be using the same infrastructure. A simple permissions change, and they could be uploading packages to [core] or [extra].

[community] would naturally become more decoupled from the AUR. Packages in [community] would become visible on the main Arch website, giving greater visibility to [community]. Also the search function on the website would then be able to search across all the repositories.

Technical steps for the transition

devtools/db-scripts have to be patched for [community]. ABS also has to be patched.

Decide what's to be done on the web frontend side (AUR, main Arch site) and then do it!

CVS to SVN migration. This would not be much of a problem since there would be scripts from the main repository migration lying around.

The most important objective of this proposal is to make [community]
use the same infrastructure (devtools, etc.) as the Arch official
repositories [core] and [extra]. Technical details about how the
transition is to be made (whether [community] and AUR should be totally
decoupled, for example) need to be discussed.